“Sir?” It was Bridger, stepping up through the trap onto the broad platform atop the tower. Above them, the flimsy wooden roof creaked. She glanced at it: the beams were rotted with damp, just about ready to collapse, but she had more pressing worries than the roof on the beacon tower. The battle wasn’t shaping up to take place there.

“What?” she asked.

“We’ve moved the boats from the docks and anchored them just off the western shore of the lake, as you requested.”

Gwenna turned. The fog had lifted enough for her to see the hulls bobbing peacefully as the water lapped up against the steep bank. She had no idea what to do with the boats, but it seemed like they might be useful and she didn’t want them falling into Urghul hands if she lost East Island. That was strategy in a nutshell—doing things you didn’t understand with the hope they might pay off later. And there were so many things she didn’t understand. . . .

“You ever been in a fight, Bridger?” she asked.

The man hesitated. “Couple of times, down at the Duck. Had to get firm with some boys from down the south end of the lake.”

Gwenna shook her head. Bar brawls. The whole Urghul nation hammering down on them, and she was leading a few hundred people whose best approximation of battle came from bar brawls.

“You ever kill anyone?” she asked.

He shook his head slowly. “I know you’re worried, sir, but we’re strong folk up here. Logging’s hard work. Breeds hard men and harder women. I figure putting an ax in a man can’t be that different from putting it in a tree.”

They were brave words, given the circumstances, but they filled Gwenna with rage. She wanted to scream at him that felling some mountain pine was nothing like killing a man, wanted to tell him how it had felt when she stabbed the young legionary in the eye during the Kwihna Saapi, how he’d sobbed and pleaded before she killed him, and then, worse, sagged against her, slack, limp, like something that had never lived. She wanted to tell him about the Urghul camp, and the blood on her sword, in her eyes, sticky between her fingers. She wanted to tell him that even after eight years on the Islands poring over corpses and beating people bloody in the ring she still wasn’t ready for it. He was watching her, dark eyes nervous.

Before she could respond, a shrill horn shivered the air to the east, then another, then another, then a thousand. An enormous flock of birds alighted, dark shapes wheeling in a great, swift circle, then flying west, south, and away. The horns kept on and on, coming and coming, until she thought they would drive her mad. When they finally stopped, however, the silence was even worse.

“Is that . . .” Bridger began.